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IN THE SKY GARDEN 

POSTHUMOUS POEMS OF 

STEPHEN MOYLAN BIRD 

F.DirF.i) BY CHARLES WHARTON STOHK 




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IN THE SKY GARDEN 



IN THE SKY GARDEN 

POSTHUMOUS POEMS OF 
STEPHEN MOYLAN BIRD 

PREFACE BY 
FRANCIS BARTON GUMMERE 



SELECTED AND ARRANGED WITH A 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY 
CHARLES WHARTON STORK 




NEW HAVEN • YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

MDCCCCXXII 






COPYRIGHT 1922 BY 
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 



To Harcourt, Brace i3 Company the Editor and the Publishers of this 
volume wish to make grateful acknowledgment for permission to reprint 
the poem entitled Stephen Moylan Bird, which appeared in The En- 
chanted Years, a volu7ne commemorative of the hundredth year of the 
University of Virginia. Of the other poems several have appeared in 
Voices and about fifteen in Contemporary Verse. 



OCT 21 72 

©Ci.ABS6411 



PREFACE 

The poems of Stephen Moylan Bird depend upon no interests 
or fashions of the present day, and have something of that 
quality which makes date and place irrelevant. His vein had not 
been worked out to the perfection of lyric such as is found in 
Shelley and in Keats ; but he had gone far beyond mere promise, 
and these brave relics of a poet in the making deserve to be 
gathered into a volume. So preserved, his verses will be read and 
valued, I think, when most of the poetry that now makes loud 
appeal is forgotten along with the excitements or the eccentricities 
which called it forth. 

FRANCIS B. GUMMERE. 

Haverford, Pennsylvania. 



THE LIFE OF 

STEPHEN MOYLAN BIRD 

1897-1919 

N. B. This sketch appeared in abbreviated form in the New York 
Nation and is here reproduced with the kind permission of the proprietors. 

It is in one way unfortunate that a poet should have a "romantic" 
history; for though the idle will be attracted to his memory by 
curiosity, the judicial may incline to be prejudiced against his 
work. The critic, in his desire to escape the bias of popular senti- 
ment, is apt to become abnormally restrained and cautious in his 
pronouncements. With regard to Stephen Moylan Bird, let me 
say that I had the fullest conviction of his remarkable genius 
before I heard of his death or had any further knowledge of him 
than came from his poems and very reserved correspondence. 
On this evidence I was led to believe that Bird was the most 
promising American poet in the realm of ideal beauty since the 
time of Poe. 

But though Moylan Bird was a deep admirer of Poe, his own 
character and style were much nearer to those of Keats. I fully 
realize the danger of this comparison, which is made rather under 
the compulsion of the truth as it appears to me than gratuitously 
for effect. American Wordsworths and Shelleys have been so fre- 
quently proclaimed that the well-wisher of a new aspirant would 
prefer, if possible, not to weight him with a similar title. Yet here 

5 



is a poet, dead at twenty-one, to whom in a quite new and personal 
way a thing of beauty is a joy forever, who lives in and makes 
real to us a world of glowing enchantment. Before deprecating 
the idea of "an American Keats," would it not be well to consider 
what ridicule would have been heaped upon him who a hundred 
years ago should have asserted that the original Keats at twenty- 
one, was what we now mean by "a Keats'"? No poetry seems to 
win its way more slowly than does that which is of, perhaps, the 
highest type, viz., poetry of ideal beauty. It was twenty-five years 
before the poems of Keats were reprinted or gathered into a 
collected edition. 

Stephen Moylan Bird was born in Galveston, Texas, on Octo- 
ber 12, 1897. On both sides he came of distinguished ancestry, 
chiefly Southern. He was directly descended from General Stephen 
Moylan of Revolutionary fame, and the brother of his great- 
grandfather was Robert Montgomery Bird, the playwright, whose 
"Gladiator" held the stage up to the last generation. The Birds 
were Virginians, the Moylans Pennsylvanians of Irish stock, and 
on his mother's side the poet inherited Welsh blood. Theorists of 
race temperament may attribute to Celtic ancestry the poet's sense 
of imagination and verbal melody. The father was a church 
organist. Moylan had an older sister, Alice, married before his 
death, and a younger brother, Robert Lee. 

Previous to the war Moylan Bird lived almost his whole life in 
Galveston. From the first he showed himself extremely sensitive 
and high-spirited, with a passionate love of wild nature and 
animals. This was carried to an extent which bordered on senti- 
mental extravagance. For instance, he used to pick up any flower 
that he found lying on the street and, bringing it home, put it on 
a special tray kept for the purpose. Shy of outsiders, he was 



devoted to his mother, sister, and brother, and was taught at home 
for several years. Uncle Remus, Alice in Wonderland, and 
Gulliver were his earliest favorites among books. 

When he went to school, he at once developed into a brilliant 
student, finishing his high school course when barely sixteen, 
at least two years ahead of the average. His favorite studies were 
English and natural history. He became a tremendous reader, 
visiting the library at every odd moment. His favorite authors 
were Kipling, Ernest Thompson Seton, William J. Long, and 
William Beebe. His great ambition was to be a naturalist and 
go to South America. Of the poets he was fondest of Vergil (in 
Latin) and Poe. He did not in general care for the Victorians or 
the New England poets, but admired Longfellow's "Skeleton in 
Armor" and Browning's "Last Ride Together." It is not hard to 
divine in him the temper of adventurous rather than sentimental 
romance. 

In many respects he was as healthy and normal as possible. 
He passed duly through the period of craze for trains and boats 
and emerged into baseball. Always of splendid physique, he 
became devoted to swimming and bicycling, anything that would 
get him out into elemental nature. His sister says of him that 
he was always an "unreconstructed Southerner," choosing Lee 
and Stonewall Jackson for his heroes, and never easily granting 
any virtue to the "Yankees." Though he memorized much of 
"Paradise Lost," he disliked Milton for his Puritanism. His 
favorite novelist was Mary Johnston, whose Lewis Rand he read 
many times. He was absolutely fearless and very hot-tempered, 
especially against any kind of cruelty. As he grew older, he came 
to loathe anything ugly, dirty, or base, whether in externals or 
in character, and it was his misfortune that his vivid and ex- 



pressive features could never conceal his thoughts. He would not 
go to church, preferring to worship in the larger temple of nature. 

Being as he was, it is not surprising that Bird made no friends 
at school. With his aristocratic temper he was quickly antagonized 
by the sort of boys he was thrown with in a large, new com- 
mercial city such as Galveston. When his mother asked why he 
held aloof from the others, he answered, "Mother, if you knew 
what those boys were saying, you wouldn't want me to associate 
with them." To make up for this Moylan Bird withdrew into his 
home whenever possible, idolizing his mother and making his 
brother his only comrade in boyish amusements. His mind de- 
veloped rapidly into wider interests, he showed a surprising power 
of memory, and became a very fluent and spirited talker. With 
all his sensitiveness, his main characteristics were his winning 
gentleness and humor. 

It was after his graduation from school that the real tragedy 
of Moylan Bird's life began. Shut out by lack of money from 
his ambition of becoming a naturalist, he first went into railroad- 
ing. Although he hated this work, his quickness and accuracy 
made him an excellent employee ; indeed, it was characteristic of 
him that he succeeded in all he undertook. A short time later he 
shifted into the cotton business and became one of the best cotton 
clerks on the exchange, but his real self remained nearly as 
unsatisfied as before. It was from this time that he began in odd 
moments to write down short lyrics as they occurred to him in 
intervals of leisure. He never apparently took himself seriously 
as a poet, never felt himself far enough along to think of a 
literary career; he simply wrote because he could not help it, 
wrote on the backs of envelopes or street-car transfers. 

It was in the winter of 1917-18 that Moylan Bird first came 

8 



into touch with me in my capacity of editor of Contemporary 
Verse. I well remember pausing as I was about to return his 
contribution with the usual printed slip. Immature as this effusion 
was, there was in it a quality of magic that arrested me. The 
writer gave a glimpse into a world of remote beauty, which he 
himself knew only imperfectly as yet, but which was far different 
from the usual realm of nowhere inhabited by the restless souls 
of youthful versifiers. I wrote a word of encouragement. Three 
or four more sets of manuscripts came with growing definiteness 
and artistry of touch. Then all at once, like a sunburst, came 
half a dozen pieces which made me jump from my chair with a 
shout. They seemed to me, and still seem, among the loveliest 
lyrics of their kind ever written in America. With the first lines 
I was spellbound by the imaginative sweep of the emotion and 
the fresh music of the plastic rhythm. Here was a boy who had 
not only created a world of his own but could bear his reader 
along with him surely and steadily "on the viewless wings of 
Poesy." Let those who will judge by a stanza whether this 
enthusiasm was unjustified. 

My soul-harp never thrills to peaceful tunes; 
In Nature's wildness my heart finds its home. 
When sporting, playmate to the winds and waves. 
O'er the wild Orkneys' battlefields of foam. 

It was to me nothing less than a miracle, a new vision of loveli- 
ness evoked by eight or a dozen typewritten lines. 

Moylan Bird's brother writes that my first acceptance was a 
tremendous encouragement. At all events, more equally beautiful 
poems were rapidly forthcoming, and during the spring I placed 
eleven on our files. The first three were published in June with 

9 



an editorial note calling special attention to the new author. Both 
critics and readers largely confirmed the opinion of the editor. 

But we must return to the personal history of the author. His 
indignation roused by stories of German atrocities, the young 
poet, though under the conscription limit, had volunteered for the 
navy before any of his poems were published. He wrote me that 
he hoped to escape from his present stifling existence into a wider 
world ; he longed especially to get out upon the ocean he had so 
vividly pictured to himself. But his expectations were completely 
disappointed. During the summer of 1918 he served as a recruit 
by the Great Lakes and on Narragansett Bay. He found the life 
even rougher and more degrading to his spirit than his office work 
had been. Not a ray of beauty or kindliness redeemed the eternal 
drudgery of mess and drill. It must be borne in mind that this 
boyish idealist was unable to make any contact with the average 
American "rookie," was doubtless unable to sense the better 
motives that lay behind the immediate duty of learning how to 
kill. Brought up on tales of heroism, he must have writhed under 
the feeling that dying for one's country had now become a mere 
affair of business and mechanics. The true poet is exceptional, and 
modern war knows no exceptions. Furthermore, living at home. 
Bird had been able largely to shun the rough-and-tumble of life 
which most of us learn gradually to meet and face. He expected 
from life what life could never give him, but the disillusionment 
for him must have been more brutally sudden than we others 
can well realize. 

I received from him only a few brief letters during the summer 
and a few scraps of verse which he had not had time to get into 
good shape. He quoted to his sister one of my replies in which 
I urged him not to let the soldier kill the poet. The words had 

10 



for him a deeper meaning than I could have, divined. About the 
same time his mother was taken desperately ill and he wrote her: 
"If anything happens to you, mother, I'll kill myself." His sister 
has told me that he often used to argue with her in defence of 
suicide, saying that a man had the right to do what he liked 
with his own life. She spoke of duty to one's friends and family, 
but he was unconvinced. 

In October Moylan Bird received an appointment as cadet at 
West Point. He had done well in the navy and would have won 
his ensign's commission, but he had the feeling that in a school for 
officers he would be associated with gentlemen, with those of his 
own instincts and susceptibilities. For this reason, though his 
family urged him not to accept, he finally decided to do so. Of 
his life at West Point little is known and probably not much will 
ever be revealed. In the first place, he was terribly disappointed 
in his hope of getting the kind of better education he wanted. The 
instruction in literature seemed infantile. Then the life in general 
seemed even worse to him than that in the navy. No doubt when 
the armistice was signed the idea of war lost all meaning. He 
stayed on because he was determined to stick it out, to keep up his 
record of never failing in anything he undertook. 

He wrote little of what was going on within him in the last 
weeks of the year. It has come to light, however, that he had two 
roommates who were determined, according to their ideas, to 
"make a man of him." As he refused to accept their ideas as to 
manhood, they changed their tactics and told him they would 
"give him hell." How well they kept their word we can only guess 
by the sequel. He first wrote his mother that he doubted whether 
he should be able to stay on. Then in a final letter he asked for 
money so that he might return home at once. As his mother had sat 

11 



down immediately on receipt of this to send the money, a telegram 
was brought her announcing that her son had been found shot 
in his room on the first day of the new year. He died before his 
family could reach him. A mystery attaches to the end in that the 
boy had received his honorable discharge from the Academy just 
before the fatality occurred. 

Still, that Moylan Bird took his own life seems probable, 
especially in view of such a fragment as the following: 

THE VOICE 

Like a cool vapor falling 
The voice of Death is calling; 
"In my dim land is Peace, 
By Lethe-languid fountains 
In my mist-shrouded mountains 
All cares and clamors cease." 

There is to me in these lines the quiet joy of a soul escaping from 
the bonds of an unnatural existence to its homeland of visionary 
beauty. The poet's only true happiness lay in the world of his 
imagination, a world completely denied him both by his regime 
of life and his associates. He was terribly homesick and could 
not get leave to return for Christmas. His deeply affectionate, 
hypersensitive spirit had been tortured deliberately for many 
weeks, at a time when both his body and mind were under con- 
tinual strain. The strict moralist may condemn, but few of us 
surely can deny a measure of understanding sympathy to the 
despair that drove this beauty-worshipping boy to his final 
resolution. 

It is not the purpose of this brief article to do other than present 

12 



and interpret the course of Moylan Bird's career. Those who 
wish to use it as evidence against the evils of military life are 
welcome to do so. Cases of suicide under such conditions have 
been by no means rare. They are part of the cost of war, it is said. 
This, however, is not the place to deal with arguments or generali- 
ties. Our concern is now not with the poet's past but with his 
possible future fame. 

Of the fifty or so of Moylan Bird's poems that give him at 
his best none is over thirty lines. Almost all are imaginative lyrics 
of wild nature : the mountains, the woods, and especially the 
sea. The individual note of these lyrics is the passionate ideality 
of their feeling and the golden, dawnlike quality of their atmos- 
phere. Classic allusion is as felicitous as in one of the masters. 
Though following conventional lines, the imagery and the verbal 
music are entirely new and vital ; one forgets all possible proto- 
types, as when reading such of Keat's sonnets as "To one who 
has been long in city pent" and "As late I rambled in the happy 
fields." To me there is something quite as original and beautiful 
in Moylan Bird's "May." 

The Pan-thrilled saplings swayed in sportive bliss. 
Longing to change their roots to flying feet. 
And, where the buds were pouting for Pans kiss. 
The high lark sprinkled tnusic, dewy sweet. 

I wandered down a golden lane of light. 
And found a dell, unsoiled by man, untrod. 
And, with the daffodil for acolyte, 
I bared my soul to all the woods, and God. 

The impatient joy of the first stanza and the deep reverence 
of the second are alike rendered with spontaneous melody and 

13 



fancy. Unforced as is the style, almost every touch is vividly 
appropriate. Faultless the lines are not, but they have an uncon- 
scious ease and abandon more winsome than any mere correctness. 
We have noticed passages about the sea and the woods. Let the 
following stand as an interpretation of the mountains, which, 
be it remembered, the poet had seen only with the inward eye: 

THE SILENT RANGES 

Give me the hills, that echo silence back. 

Save the harp-haunted pines' wild minstrelsy. 

And white peaks, lifting rapt Madonna gaze 
To where God's cloud-sheep roam the azure lea. 

Give me the Lethe of the harebell's wine. 
And in the fleece of silence folded deep. 

Let half-heard echoes of an Oread's song 
Breathe on the drowsy lyre of my sleep. 

Naturally the emotional field of a boy of twenty is not large. 
Moylan Bird was in love with love but never with any particular 
"rare and radiant maiden." Philosophy and abstractions in gen- 
eral he meddled not with. He has a couple of penetrative satiric 
ventures. The chosen familiars of his acquaintance are the spirits 
of nature. Pan, the nymphs, and the personified hours and sea- 
sons are for him the "real people." Most of his imagination is 
personal, but there is a promising touch of drama in "The Witch." 

Because her dark eyes loved the shades 
That rimmed the gold of every dell. 
When listening to the talking trees 
They said that she communed with Hell. 

14 



Two successful realistic poems emerge from a group in which 
for the most part he is ill at ease. One is to a Red Cross nurse ; 
the other, "A Song of American Industry," has a splendidly virile 
ring. Following is the third stanza: 

What of the gun-works'' flame-shot gloom? 
Where dim in the throbbing, heated room 
The cannon are born to hurl their shell 
Into the teeth of the hosts of Hell, 
And roar from their iron throats the lay ; 
"Excel your labors of yesterday T 

This is of course crude and hasty, but it indicates clear possibili- 
ties along modernistic lines. 

The poem which Bird regarded as his masterpiece and which 
has been most admired and reprinted is entitled "What if the 
lapse of ages were a dreamt" This is remarkable for fine single 
lines and command of blank-verse cadence as well as for sus- 
tained imagination. I suggested the omission or strengthening of 
a few phrases, but the poet was very strict in never using an 
adjective that was not his own. This effort shows a very unusual 
mentality in an idealist of twenty. It opens as follows : 

What if the lapse of ages were a dream. 

From which we waked, clutching the primal bough. 

Seeing familiar thunder-piercing crags. 

Vast dripping woods, and saurian-bellowed swamps. 

That wearied the new heavens with their noise. 

Wild seas, that maddened, foaming, ever gnawed 

At fog-wrapped cliffs, and roaring in defeat. 

Ran to eye-wearying distance, without shore — 

15 



All things familiar; but our dull ape minds 
Troubled with visions vague; the hungry roar' 
Of the great sabred tiger far below 
Seeming in our wild dream the thunderous sound 
Of hurtling heated monsters, made of steel. 

It was not surprising that in a city without original works of 
art Bird should have been deeply impressed by the congenial 
spirit of Maxfield Parrish, which he of course divined only from 
reproductions. A lyric shows the poet's love of chivalry and his 
gift of losing himself in a remote world of beauty. Mr. 
Parrish, to whom I sent the poem with a brief sketch of the 
author's life, wrote characteristically : "Young Bird's history is 
the saddest thing I ever heard. His tribute to my work is well- 
nigh overwhelming; goodness knows, it must have been the 
thoughts that he put into it." 

We must now attempt a summary. Did Moylan Bird really 
write anything that the world will not willingly let die? This 
is obviously not a question that his biographer may attempt to 
settle. Enough material has been furnished the reader to enable 
him to decide for himself. I believe of course that most sym- 
pathetic lovers of poetry will incline to give a decided affirmative, 
even when they leave out of account the tragic circumstances of 
the author's life. 

Mr. Henry Newbolt in his recent, very stimulating volume 
A New Study of English Poetry makes the point that a true poet 
is great even in his imperfect early work. Keats was a great poet 
in Endymion, and Endymion will always be read, even though it 
is hardly fuller of beauties than of blemishes. The poet's per- 
sonality is unmistakably there almost from the first. Had Keats 

16 



died at twenty-one instead of at twenty-six, ought we not to 
prize "I stood tip-toe" and the early sonnets'? If Bird did not 
write "Much have I travelled in the realms of gold," neither did 
Keats before coming of age write any passage of blank verse 
with such finely harmonized imagination as "What if the lapse 
of ages were a dream." As for Chatterton, who holds a secure 
place in the British Parnassus, I cannot see that he has left any- 
thing worthy to be compared with Moylan Bird. Hardly more 
can be said for the artistic personality of Rupert Brooke. The 
youthful American's nature seems in every way the finer and 
might in fortunate surroundings have proved the manlier. 

I never saw Moylan Bird, but his photograph, which faces me 
as I write, proves to me that he was all those who knew him 
best have told me of him. Brown, slightly curling hair is brushed 
back from a forehead of commanding width and height. The dark 
eyes, deep-set below level brows, have the wistful candor and 
genial sympathy of the true Celt. Celtic, too, are the lines that 
diverge from the prominent nose to the corner of the mobile, dis- 
tressingly sensitive lips. The partial weakness of the mouth is 
offset by the squarish resolute chin. It is an unforgetable, mes- 
merizing face, a face that is somehow terrible to study because 
of its unlimited susceptibility to feeling. The expression is that 
of an utterly unworldly lover of life, and it is that of one who will 
not flinch and cannot lie. Withal the countenance is surprisingly 
mature, — nobody would take it for that of a man under twenty- 
five. The more I look at it, the more I feel that there was no one 
in this generation whom I should have cared more to know. 

But here in these poems is a sufficient consolation for those who 
were not privileged to meet with Moylan Bird in the flesh. Their 
spirited joy in all the loveliest aspects of nature, their almost 

17 



supernatural tenderness and purity of feeling, make them unique 
as all beauty is unique. We should not underrate the pervasive 
force of tenderness in art, a quality which, according to a great 
critic of painting, ranked Correggio as the spiritual equal of the 
titan Michelangelo. But we must return to our smaller scale. 
Short as these lyrics are, there is a deep, unaccountable glow in 
them that becomes brighter and softer the more one feels oneself 
into them. To be sure such poems have little to do with the feel- 
ings and literary fashions of the hour. They are neither Whit- 
manesque nor imagistic. The savant who maintains that a poet of 
today should not deal with classic mythology will reject them 
utterly. Are we therefore to brush them aside like so many useless 
butterflies? This is not the answer of the late Professor Francis 
B. Gummere, a critic second to none of this generation in America. 
He writes : "The poems of Stephen Moylan Bird depend upon no 
interests or fashions of the present day, and have something of 
that quality which makes date and place irrelevant." 

CHARLES WHARTON STORK. 



18 



IN MEMORIAM S. M. B. 

iHE crowded room was rank with smoke 
And raw with fumes of drink, 
'^he air was harsh with curse and joke; 
How could you else than shrink? 

Was this^ then^ life?' Tou could not know 
l!hat evil was not king^ 
And the savage law of blow for blow 
Was not the only thing. 

For you had dwelt in youthful dreams^ 
Ethereal regions fair 

Of starlight fneads and moonlight streams 
Untouched by grief and care. 

Tou loved to war with cleansing seas, 
Tou loved all kindly mirth, 
Tou people with sweet phantasies 
Our sordid modern earth. 

Tour playtime done, you gladly strove 
'To act a true man's part, 
Tou were but plunged amid the drove 
Of tram piers in the mart. 



19 



And then came war. Ton volunteered^ 
Aflame for nobler strife. 
With hero soul., no foe you feared. 
''Ah! here^'' you said, "is life."" 

'They chained your spirit in the grime 
Of dreary camp routine. 
And two men pulled you toward the slime 
Where even love is unclean. 

"We'll make a man of you,"" they cried. 
And jeered with taunting yell. 
"Tou won't? All right then, damn your pride! 
We'll make your life a hell." 

They kept their promise -well, the two; 
They knoiv, and God knows, how. 
They tortured, poisoned, murdered you. 
May God forgive them now! 

For weeks and months with rankling art 
They probed you to the quick. 
They saw you writhe at each new smart 
Till all your soul was sick. 

The tiny room was thick with smoke 
And raw with fumes of drink. 
From foulest curse and filthiest joke 
You could not else than shrink. 



20 






Tour strength^ your hate were for the foe. 
Half -mad there at the end., 
Tou were not nerved to strike a blow 
And kill a should-he friend. 

T'hen suddenly you saw the lands 
Where poet souls belong^ 
Where rules a Power that understands. 
Where comes no taint of wrong. 

Tou saw your spirit's homeland there., 

Still lovely., still the same. 

Tou., all too gentle, all too rare 

I'o learn life as it came, 

Tou could no longer breathe the air 

Of fetid lust and shame. 

Tou did not well. But you were not. 
As we are, slowly steeled 
'to bear the ills our fates allot. 
Tou broke, you could not yield. 

T^he room was hell and life was hell. 

But there so near outside 

Was your own world where moonbeams dwell 

On dream-fields soft and wide. 

Tou did but seek your own once more; 
Tou fled the garish light. 
Tou raised the latch-pin, swung the door. 
And stepped into the night. 

c. w. s. 

21 



CONTENTS 

In the Sky Garden 26 

Maxfield Parrish 27 

What if the Lapse of Ages Were a Dream? 28 

Flights of Fancy 30 

The Lark 31 

God's Garden 32 

Treasure 33 

The Wind 34 

Dream Fields 3^ 

Castle Dream 36 

The Moon Girl 37 

Mist o' Dreams . 38 

Harpalyce 39 

The Wood Child 40 

The Witch 41 

The Bugle Note 42 

Knight Errant 43 

Your Hair 44 

Chant d'Amour 4^ 

Spring Fantasy 46 

Pan's Victory ah 

Pan's Pipe 48 

Pipes o' Pan 40 

May j;i 

Untrod f2 

23 



Spring Dresses 53 

Dryad Trees 54 

The Questing Bee ^^ 

The Drowned Grass World 56 

The Dying Seasons 57 

Spume 58 

Sea Foam 59 

On a View from My Sister's Cottage 60 

The Cornish Sea 61 

Evening 62 

Wildness 63 

Snow-Blush 64 

Llewellyn 65 

The Silent Ranges 66 

Twilight 67 

Evening Dreams 68 

Forget-Me-Not 69 

Knowledge Lost, Ignorance Regained 70 

Beauty 71 

Life 72 

The Recruit Poet 73 

Pan Dead? 74 

Skagerack 75 

Song of American Industry 76 

The Red Cross Nurse 78 

Dejection 79 

Requiescat 80 

Higher Dawn 81 

The Voice 82 



24 



IN THE SKY GARDEN 



IN THE SKY GARDEN 

In God's own garden I have sung alone, 
Moon-borne up to the angels' castle towers, 

And fingering a wind-strung, wild guitar, 

Have sung my soul song to the knee-deep flowers. 

And once an angel tossed a rosy kiss, 
Fluttering to me, a warm butterfly — 

And now, though I may walk in earthly ways, 
My heart still haunts the garden in the sky. 



26 



MAXFIELD PARRISH 

I FELT the warm glow of your sun-kissed hills 

Sweep o'er my spirit like the breath of Spring, 

And all the old perfume of chivalry 

Breathed from your castles, sky-flung on their crags, 

Romance and glamour of the olden days 

Came back to me. Once more the knights rode by 

To watch the snowy arms of maidens wave 

From towered, mirror-moated Camelot. 

Are you a mortal? In the sky's own blue 

You dipped your brush to paint those azure depths, 

And from the sunset's crucible you dared 

To steal your stately argosies of clouds. 

Now all the mortal scales fall from my eyes 

And, with my spirit's sight, I seem to see 

An angel, with strange introspective gaze. 

Who stands and paints the vales of Paradise. 



27 



WHAT IF THE LAPSE OF AGES 
WERE A DREAM? 

What if the lapse of ages were a dream, 
From which we waked, clutching the primal bough, 
Seeing familiar thunder-piercing crags, 
Vast dripping woods, and saurian-bellowed swamps, 
That wearied the new heavens with their noise. 
Wild seas, that maddened, foaming, ever gnawed 
At fog-wrapped cliffs, and roaring in defeat, 
Ran to eye-wearying distance, without shore — 
All things familiar; but our dull ape minds 
Troubled with visions vague; the hungry roar 
Of the great sabred tiger far below 
Seeming in our wild dream the thund'rous sound 
Of hurtling heated monsters, made of steel; 
And the God-scattered worlds that gem the sky 
Seeming in vision dread the blinding glare 
Of myriad windows in huge range on range 
Of mountain buildings, teeming o'er with life. 
The wallowing pleiosaurus' gurgling snort 
Changed in our dream to rhythmic, panting roar 
Of black insensate steel amphibians, 
Daring the ocean's dread horizon line; 
And the high flap of pterodactyl wings 
Making us whine with fear, for, in our dream. 
We saw vast lifeless birds, that roaring flew, 
28 



Commanded by weak puny likenesses 
Of our ape-selves; we cringed with terrors vague 
Of ungrasped thoughts we could not understand- 
What if the lapse of ages were a dream*? 



29 



FLIGHTS OF FANCY 

My fancies fly like butterflies, 
Aimless, 'mid beauty and perfume; 
The Ancient Wood's columnar aisles; 
In old rose gardens, bright with bloom. 

Where Neptune's horses toss their manes, 
Trampling in foam upon the shore; 
Down narrow craggy mountain dells. 
Filled with the cataract's deep roar. 

Nothing they know of boundaries; 
'Mid wand'ring planets, fly afar. 
And burning back like meteors. 
Bring me a verse from every star. 



30 



THE LARK 

He longs for God to hear his minstrelsy, 
Nor rests content with lower earthly things, 
And, winding up the silver stairs of dawn, 
Before the towers of the angels sings. 

There the bright golden treasure of his song. 
He pours like minstrel of the elden time. 
And, glad with his reward of showered smiles, 
Slants, singing, earthward like a cadenced rhyme. 



31 



GOD'S GARDEN 

I SAW His goldenrod for maidens' hair, 
Stretching away for many an Ophir mile; 
Saw where He nurses buds for maiden mouths, 
Watching each pouting petal with a smile, 
I saw girl eyes in dewed forget-me-nots, 
Beside their unspoke words' clear ripply stream- 
But then the Dawn kissed open both my eyes, 
Dissolving with her smile my garden dream. 



32 



TREASURE 

We cannot pluck the roses of the dawn, 
Or coin the silver largess of the moon, 
Or hoard the gold that hides in lilies' hearts, 
Making the drowsy bee in riches swoon. 

And yet, I own them all, for to my soul 
My wandering fancy Nature's treasure brings, 
To store them, safely guarded in my heart ; 
And I am richer far than Ophir's kings. 



33 



THE WIND 



Fresh from the mountains' changeless snow 
You kiss the heat from out my brow ; 
Your heart-song is a lyreful trill 
Learned from the romping, icy rill 
That taught you, as it rushed along, 
That low, heart-cooling Druid song. 
You whisper secrets of the snows. 
Found where the slender harebell blows; 
Through the ice palaces you seek. 
Jeweling the eagle-echoed peak; 
Thrill to his tempest-scattered screams, 
As he awakes the clouds' blue dreams. 
Tell me their dreams ! You wander far, 
Through ragged cloud veils, see each star 
Smile reassurance through the wrack 
That Dawn comes down her silver track, 
To make Night fold her sable wings. 
The Heav'n-aspiring lark high sings. 
Among your unseen airy streams; 
You romp the clouds among moonbeams, — 
So you must know. — Tell me their dreams! 



34 



DREAM FIELDS 

My heart goes often piping o'er the fields 

Of other mortals' dreams, to strive to find 

What lies within their pregnant mystery. 

But all my piping never lures them forth, 

And all I see behind the shifting scenes. 

Is a phantasmagoria of hues 

And sounds of deeds and thoughts, yet unexpressed, 

And vast events that quicken, yet unborn. 



35 



CASTLE DREAM 

I WANDERED dream-hung hallways, listening 
To the faint echoes of the heart-harps' strings; 
I found the secret chamber, where within 
The Muse of Poetry to Genius sings. 

From breathless hall to breathless hall I roamed, 
Until came sneaking in the furtive dawn, 
And the vast vapor castle of my dreams 
Melted before the golden smiling Morn. 



36 



THE MOON GIRL 

Low in the east, old Neptune's breath 
Spreads low in wispy white-fog bars, 
And through I watch, with rapt, fixed eyes. 
The naked Moon Girl, shameless sweet. 
Climbing her dew-drop ladder stars 
To her night-hung throne in the skies — 
Up to her throne to modest film 
Her charms in her sky -flung star-dust veil. 
Her sweet, soul-bathing smile, serene 
Falls like a cool hand on my brow. 
Around her, courtier planets lie. 
And past her, jester meteors fly. 
Leaving a twinkling merry trail; 
Modest 'fore all th' admiring sky. 
She reigns — Night's undisputed Queen. 



37 



MIST O' DREAMS 

She dreams and all her dreams float in her eyes, 
So dusky gray themselves are floating dreams, 
Mist-gray, yet deep within, a tale of blue — 
Spring sky that azure-smiles through ragged fog, 
Or blue like water's veiled opal gleam, 
'Neath the mist maidens' trailing silken scarfs. 
Oft, through her eyes, I watch her errant soul 
Walking the still, dumb corridors of Thought, 
With priestess step and strange elusive smile, 
Pursing the curved and moulded coral wealth, 
As dreamy as the dream that conjured it. 
Ah, then I long to grasp her wandering thought ! 
What vision made her smile — Love's first sweet kiss? 



38 



HARPALYCE 

She left her father's marble halls, 
When he gave up his soul to Death; 
She hearkened to the dryad calls, 
That whispered in the forest's breath. 

Now on the Xanthus' river steeds 
She flees, a foam wreath, by the dells, 
Or, when her spirit surcease needs. 
She woos her couch of asphodels. 

All mortal maidens bloom and die, 
Jove gave her immortality. 
Pure as the mountain breezes' sigh 
Her bare limbs breathe virginity. 

High on Parnassus' dawn-loved peak, 
Or cradled in cool Delphic arms, 
She hides away; and, though they seek, 
No mortals ever glimpse her charms. 



39 



THE WOOD CHILD 

She needs no playmate; laughing sweet, 
She scatters songs upon the breeze, 
And, holding to brown bunnies' ears, 
She chases leaves around the trees. 

Nor does she shame to show the woods 
Her lily-slender, white child-limbs; 
The lotus envies her bright form, 
When in the mirror stream she swims. 

But sometimes, when on lily pads, 
She woos the ripples' soft caress. 
Her blue eyes fill, and through her steal 
Vague, troubled pangs of loneliness. 



40 



THE WITCH 

Because her dark eyes loved the shades, 
That rimmed the gold of every dell, 
When listening to talking trees, 
They said that she communed with Hell. 

Because, with no interpreter, 
Her soul was face to face with God, 
They said she heard the Devil's words. 
When walking flowered ways, untrod. 

And when, poor fools, they seared her form, 
And freed her soul with burning fire, 
One, trembling, saw her spirit go. 
On slender smoke wreaths rising higher. 



41 



THE BUGLE NOTE 

The leader of the scouting party frowned, 
And peered with furrowed brows around him. Lost 
They were, for now for many weary miles, 
They had been wandering through wooded hills, 
Unknown to them. Now they had come upon 
A narrow sunny dell. Huge stately trees 
Grew from its grassy floor, and spread their limbs 
To shade a tiny brook, that flowed along 
And laved their roots with dreamy murmuring. 
The leader spoke: "To find our lost command 
Is our first care. Perhaps a bugle call 
Will bring them to us, and we can but try." 
He raised the bugle to his lips and blew. 
The loud, clear notes rang on the sunny air, 
And in the noonday stillness, carried far. 
A wandering Echo, loitering through the dell, 
Caught up the call, and slow repeated it. 
Over and over, 'till it fainter grew. 
And died away in falling cadences. 
Scarce had it died, when faint and far away, 
Thin as an elfin trumpet, through the trees. 
An answer came, and then faint shouts of men, 
And signal shots. " 'Tis they," the leader cried. 
Then through the wood they saw the marching forms 
Of their command, and closing up their ranks. 
Went forth to meet them in the sunny glade. 

42 



KNIGHT ERRANT 

"Gaily bedight, a gallant knight. 
In sunshine and in shadow." 

Poe. 

In glittering mail of imagery, 

My errant fancy rides away, 

A gallant knight with waving plume, 

To ride the dream-roads night and day. 

He rescues naked maiden dreams 
From lustful giants' castle lairs. 
Or rides the dark, soul-chilling ways 
To slay the monstrous black nightmares. 

My fancy is a gallant knight. 

He bears the blade of chivalry. 

And flushed with joy of deeds well done. 

Comes gaily riding home to me. 



43 



YOUR HAIR 

Did some Love Fairy of forgotten rime 
Break with her spell the pond'rous lock of Time, 
And down year-haunted hallways silent creep 
To Ophir's vaults, where all the misers sleep, 
Where gold lies careless piled like yellow chaff. 
And seizing a bright armful with a laugh, 
Run back to Now from Then's grave-chilly gloom, 
Fly swift up to a high wind-haunted room. 
Sit by her spinning wheel in high-backed chair. 
And weave that Midas Dream, your wondrous hair? 
Long dreamy waves, like aureate water-whirls, 
And burning like Aurora's wantoned curls, 
That flash athwart the eastern sky at dawn. 
Blazing the day's renascence, every morn I 
Dim in the fay's heart. Beauty's lyre rang. 
And, as she worked her wheel, she pensive sang 
Of smiling maiden charms, where she would place 
This wondrous hair to crown a lovely face. 



44 



CHANT D' AMOUR 

To moon-strung lyres of the mountain wind, 
The warp and woof of Love's sweet minstrelsy 
In introspective mood I dreamy wove. 
Often to higher heights I climb to find, 
Above the circumscribed ken of man 
A realm removed where I might sing of Love 
Nor risk the rough jeers of the lower herd. 
High up my heart-flute carols like a bird — 
The laurel-folded nightingale who dreams, 
And sings into the moon's leaf-laced beams. 
O, Pan I Strange elf-god of the untrod ways! 
Vainly I seek through rain-veiled April days, 
Through Spring's bright gossamer of sun-shot haze, 
When flirting eerie down the valleys wild 
Your magic piping comes, thin — high above 
The woodland's murmurs. You alone can tell 
The rapturous freedom of wild pagan love, 
With bloodless, cold restrictions all removed; 
Tell me, O, Elf-God I I have never loved! 



4? 



SPRING FANTASY 

Harebell, of the untrod deii— 

Heaven's own vintage in a cup, 

Blue-eyed, smiling, you look up. 

To catch the warm and qui v' ring bliss 

Of the cavalier sunbeams' golden kiss — 

Kiss with a hungry, eager sip 

Of the wine upon your azure lip. 

Drunk with the draught, they dance the breeze, 

Spattering gold beneath the trees; 

Ringing their round in the ancient grove, 

They tell the breezes of their love; 

But the breezes flout their least caress. 

And their feet the daisies bend and press, 

As they rush o'er the fields, o'er the sea's blue waves, 

To their father's chill and gusty caves. 

To hide flushed faces in his beard. 

Laughter gales rise — he has heard 

Of the sunbeams' love. "They will not grieve. 

Their love but lasts from dawn to eve. 

Hearts cool at eve as at dawn they swell. 

They were mad with the wine of the fair harebell." 

Swaying with laughter in the dell. 



46 



PAN'S VICTORY 

Old Pan came early out one year; 

Keen, mean the frost imps nipped his ear, 

Shrilling: "What now, mad minstrel clown*? 

The snow still covers dale and down!" 

And old Pan wandered on forlorn, 

But his eyes hoped, like the east ere dawn. 

Piping a wind-shrUl minor tune, 

To woo the absent maiden, June, 

Till under his blankets yawned the sun. 

The frightened snow away did run, 

The blackbird piped up clear and strong, 

A glad heart-thrilling mating song; 

And the violets bloomed with never a fear, 

For Spring came early, too, that year. 



47 



PAN'S PIPE 

He wandered through the wilding world, sun-splashed 

With spattered gold and broidered with bright bloom, 

Striving to give expression to a song 

Of nature's own wild harmony; he smiled 

An elfish smile, half mischief, half love-dreamed; 

He plucked the dream-tuned lute strings from the heart 

Of Poetry, he willed the wild dumb voice 

Of dew-splashed fragrant forest to his work; 

Stole from the merriment of frisking lambs. 

The verdant grace of breeze-bent reeds; and last 

Fashioned the whole with curve of maidens' limbs, 

Elf-smiled on the fulfilment of his dream. 

With far-off mind breathed into it his soul — 

Keen as a dagger's thrust, yet numbing sweet 

The sound wild fluted — from the heart of Spring. 



48 



PIPES O' PAN 

The lilting echoes of Pan's silver pipes 
Adown the budding woodland dells comes drifting, 
Like petals sifting 

Through the green tendrils of a flowering vine, 
That twine on twine, 
Circles the slender birches in the glade. 
Like some fair maid, 

Half gowned in trailing filaments of green, 
Through which is seen 

The glory of her round breasts' snowy splendor. 
And white limbs slender. 

Out of Spring's warm, sweet heart Pan's music swells 
Like water bells, 

Rung by the Naiads in the waterfall. 
The brooklet call 

To drowsy blood; made slow and dull as death. 
By Winter's breath. 

To wake the drowsy pulse to joyous thrill. 
The laughing rill 

Runs not so joyous as my wakened blood — 
Ah, life is good! 
To breathe the new-born breeze. 
That, sweeping through the trees, 
Steals their perfume and gives it all to me, 
So all my senses thrill. Now all my heart 

49 



Dances apart, 

To the wild music of immortal Pan — 

No longer man, 

But airy sprite am I, 

Child of the wide earth, and cloud-castled sky I 



50 



MAY 

The Pan-thrilled saplings swayed in sportive bliss, 
Longing to change their roots to flying feet, 
And, where the buds were pouting for Pan's kiss, 
The high lark sprinkled music, dewy sweet. 

I wandered down a golden lane of light, 
And found a dell, unsoiled by man, untrod, 
And, with the daffodil for acolyte, 
I bared my soul to all the woods, and God. 



51 



UNTROD 

I FOUND a fold of Nature's robe, 
Where violets never dreamed of man, 
And Bacchanalian buttercups, 
With cups upheld, cried: "Health to Panl"- 

And where the wealthy miller-bee 
Hummed miserly in dusty gold, 
Gorging himself with stolen sweets 
The ivory trumpet lilies hold. 

And there I laid me down to sleep. 
Folded on Nature's mother breast. 
And through the mazy ways of dreams, 
I wandered to the realms of Rest. 



52 



SPRING DRESSES 

The bashful Spring girl-shy begins 
To show her art ; a green web spins 
To clothe the shivering tracery 
Of every patient, pleading tree. 

And on her wild bird-singing loom 
She 'broiders bright the veil with bloom, 
And girlish-proud, the happy trees 
Flaunt their new dresses to the breeze. 



53 



DRYAD TREES 

They have their little vanities, 
The slender, girlish-supple trees; 
They love to watch their mirrored forms 
In pools, unruffled by the breeze. 

They watch their shadow tracery 
Sun-cast in silent woodland glades, 
And murmuring as they sleepy sway. 
They drift to dreams of lights and shades. 

For all of them are Dryad souls, 
That lay earth-bound a little time. 
Then upward rose : tall maiden trees, 
To woo the errant breeze with rhyme. 



54 



THE QUESTING BEE 

My soul goes questing like the honey-bee, 
In untrod gardens, where Love walked of old. 
And, humming on sweet errands, slyly learns 
The secrets the Madonna lilies hold; 

Where the Sun Dial Miser jealous counts 
His glowing tale of golden-slipping hours. 
That all escape, despite his watchful care, 
To paint the sun-dreams in the hearts of flowers. 

And no one thinks the honey-bees have souls, 
That drink the love vow from the blushing rose, 
But, by the fountain's silver poetry. 
The marble Faun stone-smiles; he better knows. 



55 



THE DROWNED GRASS WORLD 

Around me stretched the drowned grass world, and 

sighed 
At its own desolation. Eerie cried 
The bittern homing grayly through the mist, 
That eastward lay — a nebulous amethyst, 
But in the west the sun a broad red smile 
Beamed on his world he left for little while; 
A smile of ownership; its crimson glow 
Stretched seaward, fading. Deeper red and low 
In purple bank of mist he sank away. 
And with a chilling rush the world was gray — 
Gray grass, gray water, creeping gray mist veil 
And in the gray it seemed my soul would fail. 
I raised my voice in wild impassioned cry: 
"The why of this; the why of Life — why! why!" 
An eerie answer thrilled the mist-drowned plain — 
The crane's wild scream, like far-off cry of pain — 
Then silence claimed the shrouded world again. 



56 



THE DYING SEASONS 

The buttercups held up their gold to me, 
The lily, with her maiden-slender charms, 
Filled all my soul to surfeit with perfume. 
When Spring sank swooning into Summer's arms. 

I drank the languid Lethe of July 
The honeysuckle poured upon the breeze, 
Then dreamily watched Midas-Autumn change, 
With magic touch, to gold the waiting trees. 

Cold shrank my soul before the frost's chill breath, 
I heard the North Wind's trumpets, icy-loud; 
And now I sleep — 'till Pan shall silver pipe — 
Deep folded in the Snow Queen's numbing shroud. 



57 



SPUME 

Give me a foam- wreath for my brow, 
And let me be a merman bold, 
Hurled afar on the careless spray. 
Blown on old Neptune's breath away. 
To the isles of palm and gold. 

And, on the rolling dolphin's back, 
Let me over the breakers ride. 
O'er the waving daisy-fields of foam. 
Let me live, let me sing, and forever roam, 
And laugh with a Sea God's pride. 



58 



SEA FOAM 
A FANTASY 

I DIPPED my face into the beryl sea, 

And through the surf bells, ringing without cease, 

I heard a mermaid sing from some sea cave : 

"Down, down, come down, for here below is peace. 

I will give you all my maiden charms 

I will shower you with rose pink shells 

I will gladly lie within your arms, 

On bridal sand, lulled by the swells." 

"But, alas, mermaid, I cannot come below. 

For down beneath the sea I cannot live." 

And she replied: "Down here is endless peace. 

Drown, drown, come drown I Why stay above and strive ? 

Down here the weary mortals rest, 

Down deep the cool sea currents lave; 

You shall sleeping kiss my rounded breast. 

On a coral couch, where sea fans wave; 

You shall hold my white limbs, soft caressed, 

In the opal gloom of a coral cave; 

My lips on yours shall be warm pressed. 

As you die — for aye ! — in your coral grave !" 



59 



ON A VIEW FROM MY SISTER'S 
COTTAGE 

KNEE-DEEP, the marsh grass bravely stands 
And flaunts its spears of vivid green 
Against the tide's majestic sweep, 
Swinging ashore its silver sheen. 

Between the blue of sky and tide 
Ghost-gray the circling sea-gulls fly, 
And the wild sea's own loneliness 
Thrills through me on their eerie cry. 

And, when calm evening veils the day, 
The tall pines' censer swings afar 
And bears me on its wondrous sweep 
Up to a dream in some bright star. 



60 



THE CORNISH SEA 

Come, we win go, to Land's End bound, 
Past lurking cove and breathing sound. 
And, o'er the lark-thrilled, dewy lea, 
The opal of the Cornish Sea. 

There Neptune thrones in royal might. 
Watching his white-maned lions fight 
And 'neath his frowning gaze, far seen, 
The rainbow realm of his demesne. 

As changeful as a poet's heart, 

As guileful as the coquette's art — 

It stole my soul from me away. 

And there 'tis dream-chained, night and day. 



61 



EVENING 

Funereal chiUed the air. Along the beach, 
The dying day trailed purple scarfs of mist. 
And high above the wind's long fingers' reach, 
The evening sky was hollow amethyst. 

Each plumed palm its f ronded head sad waved. 
Amid the sombre dusk's gray mourning pall, 
Above where Day lay cold and shadowy graved, 
And one pink cloud its silver tears let fall. 

Only the sun warm smiled. No cause for tears 
He found, though all the breakers sobbed forlorn; 
His cheerful face strove to allay their fears — 
For after death is not the day re-born? 



62 



WILDNESS 

My soul-harp never thrills to peaceful tunes; 
In Nature's wildness my heart finds its home, 
When sporting, playmate to the wind and waves, 
O'er the wild Orkney's battlefield of foam, — 

My steed a white-maned tempest, wild and gray, 
Whose hoofs strike fire from each frightened wave. 
While the loud thunder strides the crumbling crags, 
And shakes his sabre when the breakers rave. 

Why walk, monk-like, in cloistered aisles of peace, 
When, whispering on every errant breeze. 
Fanning the latent fire of my blood, 
Comes the far bugle summons of the seas? 



63 



SNOW-BLUSH 

I SANG of Love upon a virgin peak 
Where the Madonna snows in holy peace 
Breathed the pure incense of the edelweiss; 
Yet as I sang amid the awful hush, 
The 'passioned Sun God strode across the East, 
And o'er the whiteness of the snow's pale cheeks- 
Halting my song with wonder — stole a blush I 



64 



LLEWELLYN 

Like the weird echo of a hunting horn, 
His name still lingers in his native hills, 
The wild winds chant it to the mountain ash — 
It glides along the murmurs of the rills. 

The high cold pride of Snowdoun marked his face. 
He fought — aye, died, but gained a deathless fame, 
For still the harp-winds and the poet-rills 
Chant to the hills he loved his echo-name ! 



65 



THE SILENT RANGES 

Give me the hills, that echo silence back, 

Save the harp-haunted pines' wild minstrelsy, 

And white peaks, lifting rapt Madonna gaze 

To where God's cloud-sheep roam the azure lea. 

Give me the Lethe of the harebell's wine. 
And in the fleece of silence folded deep, 

Let half-heard echoes of an Oread's song 
Breathe on the drowsy lyre of my sleep. 



66 



TWILIGHT 

"The charmed sunset lingered low adown 
In the red west." 

Tennyson. 

The colors linger in the west, 
All loath to leave, but one by one 
The gentle twilight kisses them, 
And grayly veils them with the sim. 

Then softly reaching up she lights 
Her tapered altar zenith-high, 
Then, on the dimly gleaming peak. 
She waits the moon to claim the sky. 



67 



EVENING DREAMS 

The West has dreamed, a Midas Dream, 
That all he touches turns to gold, — 
But wakes to find his riches gone, 
Among gray cloud peaks, frowning cold. 

The East has dreamed, a dream less rich, 
Of floating on a silver sea. 
But, moon-kissed, wakes in bright delight, 
To find her dream reality. 



68 



FORGET-ME-NOT 

At sunset wept a little bloom 
That Pan forgot to kiss; 
It murmured all the night its plaint, 
To be denied such bliss. 

Its tiny face was wet with tears, 
When rosy came the day; 
A sunbeam smiled; embraced it then, 
And kissed the tears away. 



69 



KNOWLEDGE LOST, 
IGNORANCE REGAINED 

(Without any apology to Milton) 

'* Which way I turn is nut — myself am nix." 

So spake the Arch Lunatic ; at his words, 

The other Devils tapped their echoing domes, 

As though they asked: "Is any one at home*?" 

Then in a heated blast they all made noise: 

"Knowledge is ignorance, for now we know 

That we know nothing; whereas we before 

Thought that the pains that throbbed within our lofts 

Came from too great a weight upon their beams, 

But now we realize that it was but 

The high air pressure outside on our domes 

Caused by the vacuum within." They raised a yell: 

"Ign' ranee is bliss; and bliss is happiness I 

So we are happy as we are now free ; 

We cannot worry as we cannot know — 

Better to joy in happy ignorance, 

Than worry o'er the things we think we know!" 



70 



BEAUTY 

So many girls have depthless eyes, 
So many slender lily limbs, 
And wondrous wild-rose body grace, 
To which one's mind in beautv swims. 

But, Oh how few, alas, can run 
In Beauty's music-flowing race; 
So many girls are body sweet, 
But crown all with an ugly face ! 



71 



LIFE 

I WOULD love to shake from my feet the dust 

Of hated civilized life 

And go to the roaring torrid zone — 

The land of eternal strife, 

Of blazing colors and blinding rains, 

Where one must fight to live. 

Where Joy walks hand in hand with Death, 

And only the strong survive. 

There would I live as the cave man lived, 

And play and fight and strive 

And leap and run through the tangled trees 

By Strength, only, kept alive; 

And all through the blazing tropic day 

To live wild, exultingly free. 

And sleep at night in the moon's white beams. 

In the top of a giant tree. 



72 



THE RECRUIT POET 

Chow detail!" — in the ordered rush, 
No gentleman would ever shirk; 
How can I hear Pan's silver pipes, 
Amid the grinding wheels of work? 

But gentle Night sets free my soul, 
For the brief moment ere I sleep; 
Rejoicing in its liberty 
It walks dream valleys, folded deep. 

It gathers golden threads of verse 
And falls asleep amid bright skeins. 
And, furtively, Reality 
Binds it again in Routine chains. 



73 



PAN DEAD? 

Where are the elfin, minor strains of Pan 

That down the moonbeams to my sleep would glide, 

To sport among the harp strings of my dreams 

And wake the sleeping harmony to smile? 

War sounds his brazen trumpet o'er the world, 

Shattering the inner ear with loud discord. 

Scorching the Muse's acolytes with flame, 

And with'ring Beauty with a Kaiser's laugh. 

Yet, is Pan dead? Sometimes above the din 

Of brutal, bloody strife, dim, heart-heard notes 

Call to my soul like ghosts of yearning sounds — 

I will find Pan I My Inner Self will go 

To green- and gold-shot glades, deep drowned in peace, 

To look and listen, follow inner sounds. 

Elusive as the asking eyes of Love. 

Through whisp'ring colonnades that will not tell, 

Though well they know, — and whisper, on and on. 

With flushed face kissed by perfumed Dryad breaths; 

On with delightful hopes unrealized, 

And yet always to be, . . , and elfin-far. 

Pan's fairy flute notes ever just ahead. 



74 



SKAGERACK 

(The waves on the British shore) 

I HEARD the breakers moaning for the dead, 

Those bold descendants of the Island strain 

Who died to prove a lie the Sea-Hun's boast; 

But mingled with the monothrob of woe, 

I caught the swelling of a deeper note. 

And seemed to hear, brave as a smile through tears, 

"Yet, all is safe, Britannia rules the sea!" 



75 



A SONG OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY 

Who am I, rising gigantic now — 

From the fighting man to the man at the plow^ 

My voice is heard through the ring of the strife 

To aid Democracy's fight for life; 

And I chant mid my labors, day by day: 

"Excel your labors of yesterday!" 

What of the marvelous works of steels — 
Wild music to one, if he can but feel. 
Is the wondrous machinery's roar and flame ; 
He sees the one thought and he catches its name, 
Ringing clear, loud through the clanging fray : 
"Excel your labors of yesterday I" 

What of the gunworks' flame-shot gloom? 
Where dim in the throbbing, heated room, 
The cannon are born to hurl their shell 
Into the teeth of the Hosts of Hell, 
And roar from their iron throats the lay, 
"Excel your labors of yesterday I" 



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What of the shipyard's loud turmoil'? 
Where the sweating workmen unceasing toil 
To send an argosy over the sea, 
Carrying food to the fighting free, 
To laugh at the U-boat dastards and say: 
"Excel your labors of yesterday I" 

Men die that the whole world may be free, 
But one and all, they depend on me; 
Their flashing swords and shrieking shell 
Are born of me — mad Huns to quell ; 
The breath of victory swells my lay: 
"Excel your labors of yesterday!" 



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THE RED CROSS NURSE 

She comes, between the rows of pallid beds, 
As the dew maiden comes to wistful flowers, 
And smiling benediction, drop by drop, 
She cools the dry heat of the aching hours. 

Sometimes she reads; sometimes her laughter rings 
In many a jest to smooth out lines of pain, 
Or silently her soft eyes understand. 
Like a June heaven misted o'er with rain. 



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DEJECTION 

One time, my lips could always shape a song 
On golden loom of Verse, weave Beauty's praise, 
The while my Life's craft loitered slow along 
The singing current of unshadowed days. 

But now I weary grow of goalless strife; 
No more within my heart a Love Bird sings. 
And when my hand strays o'er the Harp of Life, 
It makes but discords on the sounding strings. 



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REQUIESCAT 

'And I must rest, yet do not say: 'She died,' 
In speaking of my lying here alone." 

Riley. 

I DRIFT and dream on opiate stream, 
With dream fog ever overhung, 
And, lily-lulled, I faintly hear 
An endless love song, ever sung. 
The flowers nod above my head 
But do not say that I am dead. 
I lie in peace so sweet and deep. 
It can be naught but blessed sleep. 



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HIGHER DAWN 

I WALKED the nomad road that, ribbon-thrown, 
Climbed restless on in search of higher dawns; 
I gathered dandelion treasures, strown 
Bright, newly coined, on the lazy lawns. 

Up, up I went, until I felt God's breath 
Blow from my soul all earthly dust away; 
I longed to spread Icarian wings of Death 
And fly beyond the glorious gates of day. 



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THE VOICE 

L/IKE a cool vapor falling 
The voice of death is calling: 
"In my dim land is Peace. 
By the Lethe-languid fountains, 
In my mist-shrouded mountains 
All cares and clamors cease." 



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